Matthew Mitcham

He is also the first Australian male to win an Olympic gold medal in diving since Dick Eve at the 1924 Summer Olympics.

Mitcham originally competed as a trampoline gymnast.

He was spotted by Wang Tong Xiang, who is a coach at the Australian Institute of Sport Diving Program, while at the Chandler Aquatic Centre in Brisbane's suburbs, and Mitcham continued with both diving and trampolining for several years.

He is the first Australian male to win an Olympic gold medal in diving since Dick Eve in 1924.

It's absolutely surreal.

I never thought that this would be possible, I wasn't even sure of my medal chances at all.

After I did my last dive and I saw I was in first, I thought, "That's it, it's a silver medal, I am so happy with this" and then I won.

I can't believe it, I'm so happy.

Mitcham's medal was followed by the Australia Post issuing a 50-cent stamp of him.

At the Canada Cup he placed 26th on the 3 m and won the bronze medal on the 10 m platform.

Matthew John Mitcham OAM (born 2 March 1988) is an Australian retired diver and trampolinist.

As a trampolinist, Mitcham represented Australia at the World Junior Championships in 1999 and 2001, winning the double mini-tramp event.

From 2002 through 2004, Mitcham was a national junior champion in diving, winning the events in which he competed.

Mitcham competed at the 2002 World Junior Diving Championships, where he placed 11th in the 1 m springboard, 5th in the 3 m and 16th in the 10 m platform.

He also competed at the Australian Youth Olympic Festival in 2003, finishing sixth.

In 2004, he won the silver medals in the 1 m, 3 m synchronised, and 10 m platform events at the World Junior Championships.

At the 2004 Junior Nationals, he won the 1 m, 3 m, and 10 m and 3 m synchro titles.

At the 2004 Olympic Trials, he placed 3rd on the 3 m and 10 m individual events, 2nd on the 3 m and 10 m synchro events, and did not qualify for the Olympic team.

In 2005, Mitcham won his first senior national title.

He competed at the Australian Olympic Youth Festival, where he won the silver medal in the 1 m with a score of 508.35, and won the 3 m, 10 m and 3 m synchro (with Scott Robertson) titles with scores of 565, 555.8, and 316.23 respectively.

At the 2005 World Aquatics Championships in Montreal, he placed 12th on the 10 m platform with a score of 560.73.

In 2006, Mitcham competed in the German Grand Prix event, placing 16th on the 3 m and 6th on the 10 m, and at the US Grand Prix at Fort Lauderdale, placing 8th on the 3m springboard.

He represented Australia at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, where he competed in the 1 m, 3 m, and 10 m events.

Taking a break from the sport in 2006, he returned in 2007 and started to train under current coach Chava Sobrino at the New South Wales Institute of Sport.

As a diver, he was the 2008 Olympic champion in the 10m platform, and he is the 2nd highest single-dive score in Olympic history (at the time it was the highest scoring dive ever).

This made him the first openly gay athlete to win an Olympic gold medal.

In 2008 Mitcham won the 1 m, 3 m and 10 m individual events at the Australian Nationals.

Later that year he won the 2008 Diving Grand Prix event in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Mitcham represented Australia at the 2008 Summer Olympics in the 10 m platform and the 3 m springboard events.

Following his victory at the 2008 Summer Olympics, Mitcham placed fourth in his next major contest on the 10-metre platform, the 2009 World Aquatics Championships in Rome.

He was beaten narrowly by Zhou Lüxin, the Chinese diver he'd beaten in the Olympics final, while British youngster Tom Daley took home the championship.

He placed 4th in the 3 m and the 3 m synchro with Robertson, and 5th on the 1 m and 10 m events.

At the 2010 Commonwealth Games, Mitcham won four silver medals, partnering fellow Australian diver Ethan Warren to come runner-up in the synchronized events in both the 3 and 10-metre.

He placed 16th on the 3 m springboard and did not qualify for the final.

He qualified in second position for the semi-final and final of the 10 m platform event.

After experiencing mixed success in his first five dives in the final, Mitcham entered the final round of dives in second place, 34 points behind Chinese diver Zhou Lüxin.

After Zhou performed his worst dive of the final and scored 74.80, Mitcham still needed to score 107.30, a very high score on the platform, to win the gold.

However, his near-perfect final dive drew four perfect 10 scores from judges and achieved a score of 112.10, the highest single-dive score in Olympic history at the time.

He finished with an overall score of 537.95 to defeat Zhou, who finished with an overall score of 533.15, to win Australia's second diving medal of the Games.

His win prevented China from claiming a clean-sweep of all diving gold medals at the Olympic Games.